Glitch
by Dyslexic Angel
Summary: To lose is to find, and to find is to lose if you can't solve the puzzle, the only way to win is not to play. A nobody has nothing left to lose. Zemyx, ZexionXDemyx, yaoi, slash, whathaveyou.


You wouldn't think to look at him that Zexion played video games. What with the book he carried everywhere, it would have been easy to assume just the opposite. On the other hand, on quiet nights the faint electronic chirping could be heard from the room marked VI, and no one was surprised enough to comment.

Zexion _liked_ video games. He liked the challenges, the brutal violence, and he particularly loved finding glitches and cheats. He loved the thrill of breaking the system; it was almost enough to bring a smile to marble features, stir the pulse a hair beyond it's standard zzzzzzz beats per minute. Almost.

Nobodies did not truly sleep. They feigned it, just as they feigned awareness and emotions and their very breath itself, but Zexion had always found such pretending to be an utter waste of time. In short, number six was an insomniac of the first degree. Often he could be found, in the murky twilight that passed for both day and deepest night, stalking the perfectly white halls. He stalked silently, one with the shadows, looking for something. Even he had no clue what he searched for; he only knew he would know it if he saw it.

Such searching is dangerous in the castle. To search, is to one day find, and when to find is to lose, searching is casting pennies into a fountain and making pointless wishes. In the end, the disks of copper are gathered by greedy hands, the wish does not come true, and the poor sap is left a few cents poorer, with the bitter taste of broken hope in the back of his mouth. Zexion knows all this; he isn't stupid. He knows he ought to lock the door and still his pacing feet—but there is something in the shadows, and it calls to him.

Tonight is no different from any other. The half-light is not a shade dimmer; no thrill of premonition rushes his footsteps. It is not until he turns the corner, and nearly trips over the sprawled form of number nine, lying in the corridor. The usually absurdly cheerful musician is wearing a vague, distant look and appears to be utterly fascinated with his boots, until looking up brings him eye to eye with Zexion. It may just be the half-light and the angle, but he seems so fragile that the other man cannot help but be drawn. The two stare at each other for a long, heated moment.

Several weeks later, and hour past midnight find the two in the hall again. Pressed tightly together, skin trying to melt into skin in a flurry of heated passion and carnal desire. When that fury has dulled and faded, they sit together against the wall, soft voices lying gently on the unnatural silence that always fills the castle.

"Zexy, what are we?" Demyx asks it softly, hoarsely, half expecting no reply.

"We are nobody and nothing." Zexion's voice is cool and reed-dry, as though reciting a worthless fact or an inacurate number, but something in his expression is haunted.

"No." The musician shakes his head fiercly, with the bold openness that permeates everything he does. "That's not what I meant. What are we to each other?" Zexion waits a heartbeat, then two, before answering, and he sounds like someone gargling desert sand, rough and dry and painful.

"We are nothing." Anger rises visibly in Demyx, the cools and dies before reaching it's peak. "We can't be anything. We can't afford it."

"Remember that game we played in your room last night?" Zexion blinks at the apparent non-sequitur. "The one where that one shop, if you didn't have any money, you didn't have to pay?" The schemer manages a brief nod, still unsure of where this is going. "To lose is to find, and to find is to lose." Demyx could almost be talking to himself, thinking out loud. "What is a nobody but someone with nothing left to lose?" The last is whispered softly, reverently.

"Fool." Zexion's tone is soft, almost endearing, and bitter hope tinges his voice.

"Don't tell me you haven't felt it, to. We shouldn't be able to feel it." Demyx has come alive, with a fire in his eyes. "You wandered the castle for months before we first started talking, and so did I. And I think we both found something, even if we didn't know it." His voice drops to a dull whisper, clear and sharp with raw emotion. "I _feel_ it, Zexy. Every time I'm near you, its like a lightness in my chest. Every morning when you leave, it's a dull ache." He leans forward, until the two are eye to eye and frozen mere inches apart. "We couldn't long for hearts so much if we didn't have something like them."

"Hush." Zexion speaks softly again. "hoping only hurts when your dreams die. I can't afford hope, Demi." More softly still, almost too quiet to be heard, "I feel it too."

Then the two are kissing again, with a ferocity that shouldn't be possible for people who aren't people, and Zexion can only think that this is better than finding a glitch in a game, better than anything. They've both found something—a glitch in karma, fate, whatever you call the two-faced trickster. As Zexion kisses his impossible lover, his pulse races at the sweet rush that only comes from breaking all the rules.


End file.
